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A brilliant article China’s Great Regulatory Wall on Wall Street Journal by Duncan Clark discussed China’s troubled way of its own 3G standard TD-SCDMA’s commercial inception, which is not ready yet even to this day.
 

According to the article, the population of w-cdma has reached 140 million and EV-DO 70 million, both of which have formed a lively industry chain of manufacturers and providers; but look at TD-SCDMA, it hasn’t even reached a stage that’s mature enough for commercial inception.
 

Everyday TD-SCDMA’s falling further behind its other two rivals, especially W-CDMA. HSPA, the so called enhanced W-CDMA, can now transfer data at as high as 20 to 40 Mb per second, which is now even taking fixed-line ADSL’s place as the primary broadband in Sweden, while TD-SCDMA, whose data rate is only at 2.8 Mbps, is still struggling on its way to its commercial inception, which we can only presume to be in summer 2008, optimistically.
 

And there’s price to pay for China’s authorities stubbornness, Duncan Clark discussed:
 

The Chinese telecom solution provider Huawe and ZTE have grown to be a very competitive in the international market, especially on the newly developed territories. But ironically TD-SCDMA, the Chinese authorities are pushing, is actually dragging the two companies back. As their company scales are still smaller than Ericsson, Alcatel-lucent or Nokia-Siemenz, the R&D resource that can be available to them are very limited. Yet Chinese government has assigned them to provide solutions for TD-SCDMA’s commercialization, which unavoidably distracted their resource in competing with their international rivals.
 

And to talk about the initial good wish of TD-SCDMA, which is to help Chinese manufacturers to gain bigger domestic market share, now seem to be redundant. In 2006, Huawei’s domestic sales has gained 22% of the market, overcame Ericsson to become the No.1 in domestic market; while ZTE now ranks the 4th place after Nokia-Siemenz.
 

China’s mobile operators haven’t benefited too much from TD-SCDMA neither. The biggest mobile operators China Mobile has been assigned by the authority to implement TD-SCDMA, when the natural upgrade to W-CDMA from their existing GSM network is ignored; China Mobile can hardly hide their disappointment. And in order to favor the TD-SCDMA standards as Chinese government intended to, no 3G licenses will be issued before TD-SCDMA is ready for commercial inception, which results in the delay of the long anticipated re-structuring of China’s telecommunication industry, which has been a pressing issue for a long time.
 

And come down to the most challenging part of TD-SCDMA’s way to success, are Chinese customers going to like the TD-SCDMA phones. None of the big international handset manufacturers are making TD-SCDMA handsets. There’re probably only ten’s of models of TD-SCDMA handsets to choose from, which’re not produced by famous brands such as Nokia, Motorola; while there’re handreds of W-CDMA models available already. And fashion design and famous brand will become important factors when selling handsets in China.
 

Clearly Mr. Duncan Clark thinks TD-SCDMA is bringing more trouble to China than its benefit. The issues he’s discussed in the article do make great points. As it’s been already made a fact by Chinese government that everything will have to wait for TD-SCDMA’s commercial inception, let hope for the best out of it.

Last update: 06-02-2008

Samsung, NXP Semiconductors and T3G Technologies today announced the world's first TD-SCDMA HSDPA/GSM/GPRS/EDGE multi-mode mobile phone. Powered by a software-defined modem capable of achieving data transfer rates of 2.8Mbps, the Samsung SGH-T578H enables about 20 times faster transfers than GPRS, allowing consumers to download several high-quality MP3 files in less than a minute. The phone is based on the T3G7210 system solution featuring the industry's first soft modem empowered by NXP's Embedded Vector Processor (EVP) to achieve high data transfer and multi-mode capability.

TD-SCDMA network deployments have been completed in 10 major cities across China where there are more than 70 million potential subscribers. This network is planned to be upgraded to support Release 5 (HSDPA) of the TD-SCDMA standard during the course of 2008.

"Samsung has always been at the cutting edge of mobile technology. Together with NXP and T3G, we have achieved several major milestones for TD-SCDMA phones - from the first TD-SCDMA video phone to this current high data transfer rate TD-HSDPA dual-band prototype," says W.S. Lee, Vice President, Handset R&D Planning, Telecommunication Network Business, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. "Multimedia and sharing of content will be the drivers for next-generation handsets." The combination of T3G's leading TD-SCDMA technology and NXP's very innovative EVP technology make them obvious partners of choice to provide consumers a high-end multimedia experience in a run up to the Beijing Olympics."

Samsung's SGH-T578H is based on the T3G7210 system solution which uses the world's first 2.8Mbps HSDPA modem IC, TD60291. NXP's Adelante VD32040 embedded vector processor enables the modem to achieve 2.8Mbps peak data rates and fully supports the 3GPP TDD-LCR Standard Release 5. The T3G7210 system solution also supports quad-band EDGE and dual-band TD-SCDMA with integrated multimedia accelerators to allow for the development of high-end feature phones without the need for additional external co-processors.

For more information,  visit www.samsung.com.

Last update: 12-11-2007

For the first time, an official of one of the mainland's four state-controlled telecom operators admitted yesterday that licenses for third-generation, or 3G, mobile services may not be issued in time for the Beijing Olympics.
"It seems to me there's no rush" to issue 3G licenses, Dow Jones Newswires quoted China Netcom (0906) independent director Hou Ziqiang as saying.

When asked if the central government will issue 3G licenses after the Olympics, Hou said "maybe."

China has said it will offer 3G mobile services in time for the Olympics, but has not provided details about the licensing process. The ambiguity has led some to believe that 3G roaming services will be offered to foreign visitors using an advanced trial network, instead of officially licensed commercial services, and will leave the licensing process until after the Olympics.

"The Olympics cities already have TD-SCDMA," Hou noted, referring to Time-Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access standard, a homegrown technology being tested. TD- SCDMA will be offered in conjunction with services based on the American- developed CDMA2000 and European- backed W-CDMA.

China Netcom's parent is responsible for testing TD-SCDMA in the Olympic city of Qingdao. China is testing TD-SCDMA in 10 cities.

Last update: 27-09-2007

San Diego, Calif.—Quorum Systems Inc. has introduced an ultra-low-power, multi-band, multi-mode RF transceiver, the Sereno QS3200, adding TD-SCDMA support to its existing 2G/2.5G/3G RF transceiver family.

Quorum's QS3200 single-chip multi-mode transceiver, implemented in bulk CMOS, simultaneously supports dual-band (1900MHz and 2000MHz) TD- SCDMA/HSPDA Category 10 and Quad-band (USGSM850, GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900) GSM/GPRS/EDGE.

Derived from Quorum's existing, QS3000 WCDMA+EDGE transceiver, the QS3200 also integrates all six LNAs, requires no external Baluns, and its digital transmit architecture removes the need for external transmit SAWs for TD-SCDMA as well as GPRS/EDGE.

Compared with conventional devices, the QS3200 eliminates four chips from the radio BOM, without the need for costly modules, according to the company. The integration of LNAs and removal of transmit SAWs and Baluns further reduces the resulting radio footprint and cost.

Quorum Systems Inc., 1-858-546-0895, www.quorumsystems.com

Last update: 06-09-2007